This will be the third year in a row I’ve started the Two-Year Novel Course developed by Lazette Gifford. The first year she offered it on the new Forward Motion site, I got cancer, and that kind of blew keeping up with the course out of the water for me. It was all I could do to keep up with writing regularly.

Last year, I started it again for 2014; that time, a late-summer move and the resulting insanity interrupted my progress. I did try to catch up, but by the time I got to the sections where writing was to happen, I couldn’t get Xedepria’s story to move. At all. And I really wanted to write it for November. In the end, I decided to work on the one project that was moving, and I had fun with it, but getting the first Autocrat book going is still out of the question. I’ve read my stuff set on Chraest, gone through stories and plot cards and the 2yn exercises for Xedepria’s story, but nothing set there is going right now, and I’ve even actually passed out of the mood where I even want to look at stuff set on that world. It’ll come back; I just have to be patient and remember that pushing myself to work on projects I have no interest in whatsoever in working on Does Not Go Well for me. Even if I want to bury myself in those stories.

About two weeks ago, I thought I wouldn’t be doing the 2yn course this year. I had no ideas for new worlds, and didn’t really want any. No ideas for stories for new characters, and didn’t really want any. And I was at a total loss as for ideas to use for a magical system (besides one based on plagues I can’t seem to pin anywhere at all, no matter where I try), and didn’t really want any.

Then, Jennifer Amriss returned from an unannounced hiatus from Forward Motion and I cornered her in IM to discuss with her the fact that my creative mind had for the past several weeks been presenting me with a magical concept she uses in her God Jars books. We borrow off of each other, and don’t mind it, but I wanted her input because I was simply not seeing the angle my creative mind wanted me to take with it. If I remember right, I over the course of that conversation opened an old, old wip I wouldn’t have had access to without a program called Open Freely which opens a basic editor for obsolete files.

And that conversation and the old manuscript of a defunct story which went nowhere gave me the seeds I needed for my 2yn15 project, Whispers on the Wind.

Those seeds were:

1) Basic magical system. And I mean very basic. Just what two of the three types of mages were called and nothing at all on the third type.

2) Notions about the deific pantheon. And those were extremely vague.

3) The shadow of a new character, who Jennifer Amriss gave me the initial name, Shivanni (iirc), for. All I knew about him was that he was one particular type of mage.

4) And the fact two of the three types of mages regularly bond.

In the week or so since those first conceptions, I’ve developed my primary Main Character, Shi’u, started a constructed language file to name All The Things, developed a society based loosely on Ancient Egypt, and filled in some of the holes in the magical system. I’ve been hard at work on this project in part because it’s the only thing my mind wants to focus on. The rest? It’s simply been a great deal of fun working up these things.

I’m hoping this year I can keep up with the 2yn course. I’m not going to save WOTW for writing specifically during Nano, and may actually set it aside for the duration of that month. This is the world I’ve transferred the name Hatu Napor to, and it’s got a long way to go, though I already have the inklings of ideas for other stories set here.

1 Comment

Site News

My first fiction series, Discordant Harmonies 1: A Pitch of the Scale, is now LIVE! Click on the post header to get a list of all the parts in the series. A new chapter will post every Friday from now on until it is complete. It will also be available on Wattpad.